Special Report: Lear Theater stalls despite millions in donations

Jul. 17, 2011

After more than a decade of fundraising in an effort to restore the historic Lear Theater in downtown Reno, the nonprofit in charge is $30,000 in debt and work is far from complete, and donors say they are upset. / Liz Margerum / RGJ file

Written by

Those who pass by the landmark 72-year-old Lear Theater on Riverside Drive in downtown Reno notice the dying lawn, crumbling steps and the fading paint on its buttercream-colored walls.

They are signs of bigger problems.

The theater's board of directors has had four different presidents in the past year, and the nonprofit organization is $30,000 in debt. That's the remaining amount Lear Theater Inc. owes on $75,000 that board members borrowed a few years ago to pay the two employees who worked in the administration office. Those employees were laid off last August, and the theater's administration office has been closed since. Calls to its telephone number are answered by a message that says the voice mailbox is full.

And the building next to the administration office on West First Street was sold last year for $81,000 to help pay off other bills.

Now, more than a decade since the building was purchased and after years of community fundraisers held to help renovate the historic former church into a community theater, the project is in jeopardy.

Local leaders and Lear board members say they are trying to formulate a business plan to save the theater, but they say it will once again require the public's support and donations.

That won't be an easy task.

"Have they lost credibility? That's an understatement," said Reno attorney Peter Chase Neumann, who donated $3,000 during one fundraising campaign. "There are a lot of angry people."

The theater's organizers originally thought the cost to buy the church and to renovate it would total $3 million. But as of June 2010, $7.7 million had been spent and the latest estimate calls for an additional $12 million to complete the project.

Current and former Lear Theater board members say the cost to finish the theater has been a moving target for years for various reasons:

» Encountering problems typical in old buildings -- especially one not designed to be a theater -- that pushed renovation costs ever higher;

» And, most recently, the worst economic downturn in the nation since the Great Depression.

"People are really disillusioned," Nettie Oliverio, a former chairwoman on Lear's board of directors, said. "Then they question what happened to the money. Did someone run off with it or what? I would say that is not the case here."

Unexpected costs

Dealing with a problem in the Lear's acoustics after its stage was redesigned is one example of a renovation that resulted in even more money being spent, Oliverio said.

"It originally had a tiny little stage, like a lecture stage for a church," she said. "When we extended it and performers stood on the apron, we discovered this very mighty echo."

An acoustics expert was hired to ameliorate the problem.

"He did a magnificent job, but the price tag went up with new wiring, new speakers," Oliverio said. "That was the beginning of moving us from a $3 million project to effectively doubling construction costs to take care of echo issues. It was the genesis of what happened economically to the theater. It started what became a pattern of reaching for the gold ring, and every time we almost get there, the ring moves."

Then China's construction boom heated up.

"We had an extraordinary increase in the cost of materials," Oliverio said. "When we got a quote on steel and concrete, it would change literally within hours. Then all of a sudden, without making any changes to the architectural plan, the cost of doing the construction was out of sight."

But Oliverio said that from 2001 to 2004, during the time she was chairing the fundraising campaign, the Lear Theater organization continued to actively pursue funds, raising about $1 million a year.

It was a $1.1 million donation from Moya Lear, for whom the theater is named, that allowed a coalition of arts groups in 1991 to buy the former First Church of Christ, Scientist that became the Lear Theater.

(Page 3 of 7)

Lear was the wife of Bill Lear, the industrialist who developed Learjet. The daughter of a vaudeville performer, she supported the vision to provide the community with a mid-sized, roughly 300-seat theater that would provide an additional stage for Nevada opera, ballet, choral and other groups.

New director changes vision

In January of 2005, after a national search, the board of directors hired a new executive director, Daniel Rosenblatt, paying him $90,138 the first year and raising his salary to $100,205 the next year.

Rosenblatt had the kind of theater background most board members wanted. He had worked as an associate producer for the Walt Disney Co. and a producer for the Universal Studios theme park in Japan. He was also involved with the renovation of the New Amsterdam Theater in New York as well as theaters in Boston, Chicago and Hollywood.

Rosenblatt thought the Lear would be a good home for its own professional theater company, similar to the one in Ashland, Ore.

Scott Gibson, a former longtime member of the board who served as president in 2009, didn't support that plan.

"That was the direction Dan wanted to go, and he felt that was the mandate of the board when he was hired, but he pushed away the community arts people because he was going to bring in touring performing artists, and that didn't embrace the local art companies that were supporting us before, so they fell out of the picture," said Gibson, who left the organization last year due to a conflict of interest when his wife was hired as the Lear's new architect.

Gibson said Rosenblatt's plan to make the Lear a venue for touring performance companies failed to take into account one thing.

"The problem with Dan's plans for a performance theater is that you are targeting a very exclusive audience of theater patrons, and we don't have a big pool of those in this community," he said. "That was a major flaw, and I don't think most of the board members understood the problem of going in that direction. And it ended up absolutely alienating the Reno Little Theater and other local community arts groups."

(Page 4 of 7)

However, Rosenblatt , who returned to Los Angeles after his resignation in November 2008, said his plan included letting other local companies rent the Lear when it was available.

A more practical plan, Gibson believes, would have been to turn the Lear into a multiuse community theater open to various professional performance groups but also to the public for high school plays, weddings, funerals, Neil Young unplugged concerts with pricey tickets and free Artown events.

"But this project has raised $10 million to $12 million since 1997, and a lot of folks in the community have never seen the value of their investment so far.

After Rosenblatt resigned, Gibson said, he was surprised by the anger he had generated within some sectors of the community.

"He had turned off people who previously had been significant supporters. Personality-wise, he rubbed people the wrong way. He never really got into being part of the community," Gibson said. "He had a great resume and a lot of knowledge, but again, he was a professional theater person and that was never a viable plan for this community.

"It needs to be a multiuse community facility and have a lot of people using it and excited about it," Gibson said. "Dan had this one single-minded vision. When he talked to people who know how to run a business and fill seats in this community, they just said, 'This just isn't going to fly."

Fallout from broken promises

After his resignation, Rosenblatt returned to Los Angeles and retired, although he said he still does consulting work and is working to produce a couple of musicals.

During a telephone interview from his home, Rosenblatt said did not want to be in the position of having to defend himself or put down any of the people he had worked with during his time in Reno.

"We reached a parting of the ways, and I am not sure there is anything to be gained for Reno or the Lear Theater in a conversation that denigrates into a 'he-said, she-said' argument."

(Page 5 of 7)

However, Rosenblatt said he took "a lot of heat" for his proposal to turn the Lear into a theater for professional acting companies, and even more community outrage for his plan to move the theater to the city-owned park about 100 feet away and sell the land to developers, possibly for a condominium project.

"Some people seem to think I operated in a vacuum and was able to make these decisions myself," he said. "That's not true. I couldn't have made these decisions without the board's approval."

The theater ran into financial problems with all the money being spent on redesigns based on Rosenblatt's board-approved proposals. But Rosenblatt said it also was increasingly difficult to get donations in a community unwilling to pour more money into the project.

By the time he became Lear's executive director, Rosenblatt said the theater had a nine-year history of repeatedly asking for donations with promises of the theater finally opening, but which never did.

"I don't want to dismiss the work that they've done, but in my experience, you quietly raise as much money as you can until you get to the point you are almost certain you have enough (to be able to reach your goal) before you announce a public fundraising campaign," he said.

"If you constantly are raising what you think it takes to open and building and make a promise it is about to open, and then you wind up needing more money, from a PR standpoint you're losing the support you need," Rosenblatt said.

To counter that, Rosenblatt said he had hoped to utilize money from federal tax credits and also capitalize on the property values, which were high at that time. The land under the Lear could be sold, the theater moved just across the street nearer to the Truckee River and there would be enough money to fix it and finally open it.

"The numbers batted around were for $8 million to $12 million dollars," he said. "Then the real estate market started to fall. When the market began to turn, there weren't those kind of numbers, so it no longer made sense to explore that option."

(Page 6 of 7)

Roseblatt said he still believes opening the Lear Theater can play a vital role in revitalizing Reno's economy and in the role of arts and culture in the community.

"Ultimately, the Lear Theater, in order to move forward, needs the public to get on board," he said. "That's the only way that theater will succeed is if the public takes ownership of that building."

Efforts to save the theater

Leilani Schweitzer, the current president of Lear's board of directors, said almost nothing has been raised in the way of donations this past year.

"The reality we, as a board, face is that we have a finite amount of money for operating expenses to carry us through about one more year," Schweitzer said.

But with the help of other board members and community leaders, Schweitzer is not ready to give up.

"While it may seem like the Lear Theater is a dead duck, it is more like the Lear will hibernate while any and all options will be looked at to save it," she said.

Schweitzer and fellow board member Robert Gurnea began exploring those options earlier this month with the help of Reno attorney and former state senator Thomas "Spike" Wilson and Reno Mayor Bob Cashell.

Cashell, who last year was named an honorary chairman of the Lear's fundraising committee, said one possibility is to find another nonprofit organization to take over the Lear Theater. He said he has been talking with the director of one such group, but he declined to name it.

"Their board of directors knows nothing about it yet, but I talked to one individual (with the organization) who seemed to have an appetite for it," he said.

Wilson, who was the lawyer and friend of Moya Lear and her husband, said no group would consider taking over the theater in its current state unless it has a business plan and a budget in place first.

He and Cashell plan to look at construction plans for the theater and talk to a contractor about what it will cost to finish its renovation.

Reno architect Mercedes de la Garza is working on a streamlined design to complete the theater at a reduced cost.

(Page 7 of 7)

"It's a slightly changed design that will save a considerable amount of money," she said. "From the outside, the building will look almost identical, but we're taking advantages of what already is inside the building. The direction I was given is it should be a community theater and not a world-class theater."

De la Garza couldn't estimate how much the simplified redesign will save, but she said the new design retains the Lear's historical significance and allows it to qualify for the $5.5 million Save America's Treasures grant already approved by the U.S. National Park Service.

Those funds must be matched, but Cashell believes it will require community leaders stepping forward and joining Lear's board of directors.

"To bring credibility to the board, it's going to take somebody talking to the senior leaders in town to see if they can get involved and help raise money," he said.

Tax credits, grant obtained

Ron James, Nevada's historic preservation officer, said two things were accomplished in recent years that are pivotal to getting the Lear Theater's doors finally open.

"They have gotten the ($5.5 million) Save America's Treasures grant through the U.S. National Park Service, " he said. "But the most important thing is they also got 20 percent federal (historic) tax credits."

The tax credits are not write-offs, James said, but a percentage of money the Lear Theater gets back for money spent on renovations.

"If they spend $10 million, they get $2 million back in cash through the park service," James said. "Those are two huge steps forward and critical for fundraising."

But those federal financial windfalls will require donations from the community -- again.

"It needs community support," James said. "I know they've gone to the community many times in the past, but most of things they have accomplished with the money that they received have been substantial."

But asking for more donations will be a hard sell to people like Neumann, the Reno attorney who already has donated thousands of dollars to the project.

"The Lear Theater has such an interesting history, and it definitely needs to be saved," said Neumann. "It is a beautiful building. But before I gave another donation, I would really have to be convinced that the people involved were capable of actually getting it going and opened. Right now, call me a skeptic."